Me and You and, Well, We Have Bo Here
by Elenhin
Summary: One shot, Luke and Cooter spends a sunny afternoon tinkering with the tractor, and a young Bo tags along, but does not quite understand the joke made.


Authors Note: This is about Bo and Luke Duke, and they are two good ol' boys that I just had to write about. Their experience here, with the midnight trip through snow, is one I have experienced myself, and it can hardly be described. It is so beautiful

Big thanks to GrayWolf84 for beta work.

Disclaimer: The Duke Boys are not mine, I made up the names of the other drivers, but I don't own the Duke boys, not the General Lee. I promise that once I'm through with them, there will be nothing broken that a trip to Cooter's garage can't fix….

* * *

Me and You and, Well, We Have Bo Here

Luke and Cooter were both flat on their backs beneath the tractor, their heads coming together in the middle, their legs sticking out on each side of it. They were working hard and Luke had long since pulled off his shirt while Cooter still wore his own oil stained greasy shirt with the torn of sleeves. They had been working all morning since Cooter had come out to the farm just after breakfast, and they were not about to get done before lunch, that much was certain by the way things looked.

Then they could hear how someone came running towards them. It could only be one of two people - Bo or Daisy. Both were Luke's cousins and lived with their uncle the same as he did. Cooter was a friend of the family, and the one the Duke boys hung out with the most often. He was already proving to be a most talented mechanic, and loved it as much as Luke did. Tinkering with the old beat down tractor was not a chore to them, it was a pleasure. They had an old beat up radio blaring not too far from them. Today both of them had felt like having some music on while they worked, and occasionally they would sing along in some odd song or another.

"Whatcha doing?" Luke grinned as it proved to be Bo whom they had heard come running. It most certainly was his mop of blond unruly hair that near got into Luke's face as the boy came crawling in on his stomach to join them.

"Hey there Bo." Cooter grinned, ruffling the boy's hair, ignoring both Bo's indignant objections and the fact that he left oil stains in his hair.

"Well, what are y'all doing?" Bo repeated his question. He was ten, and a wild kid. Luke used to claim that he was the only ingredient for a disaster recipe, and it wasn't too far off the mark at that. He just changed the phrasing of it at times, but he always claimed the same thing. Bo tried to inch closer. He was still sprawled on his stomach and was supporting himself on his elbows. When he tried to crawl forward he came up against a bolt on the underside of the tractor, and the two other boys laughed at his whined 'ouch' as he rubbed his head.

"We're trying to keep ya from getting ya'self killed." Luke grinned. "Keep ya head down Bo, or ya ain't gonna have it attached on ya shoulders for too much longer."

"I'm keeping it down," Bo declared. "Now what are ya doing?"

"We're fixing this ol'tractor here." Cooter grinned.

"Don't ya have homework to do?" Luke asked the little boy. Bo was little, maybe not the shortest ten year old in town, but he sure wasn't the tallest one either, though Jesse claimed he would have a growth spurt and most likely pass them all.

"Uncle Jesse said I could do it after dinner, when ya can help me with the math and all," he declared happily and Luke groaned. He didn't mind helping his cousin with his homework all that much, but Bo and math was a combination he didn't like. The boy just couldn't see the point of it, and that meant he could never count out any of the sums on his own. That meant he would spend the whole after noon with a boy who would say 'I don't know' every time he was asked something.

"If ya get started on it now, there won't be all that much to do after dinner." Luke tried to trick him into getting some of it done.

Bo shook his head and came a hair's breadth from hitting his head on the same bolt once more. "I can't get it worked out on me own Luke, I don't understand it all"

"Well, don't you have any chores to do?" Luke tried instead.

"Nope, all done." Bo beamed a wide grin. "I've gotten all of the eggs, an' I swept the floors, an' I even helped Uncle Jesse drying the dishes, an' I fed the chickens…"

"Okay Bo, we get the point," Luke interrupted him before he could go into a detailed explanation of everything that he had done during the day. No doubt he had already chatted the ears off Uncle Jesse and been sent out to bother someone else. It was not that he minded Bo, in fact he loved him dearly, but the lad could chat the ears of a deaf mule when he got going.

"Can I help y'all?" Bo asked leaning closer to Cooter so that he was nearly lying on top of his chest.

"Of course ya can." Cooter grinned. Despite the age difference he saw Bo as a friend, and sometimes like something of a little brother as well. He guided Bo's hands so that he would know what to do, and helped him when the little boy just wasn't strong enough. Bo was quiet in admiration of Cooter and Luke and what they could do. Them two boys was his heroes, just as much as Uncle Jesse was, and he had imprinted in them just what it meant having a boy Bo's age who looked up to them that way.

Cooter laughed when Bo stole his oil-stained cap and put it on his own head to look more like him, even if the cap was far to big for him. It hung loosely on Bo's head, and threatened to fall off every time he moved his head.

Luke sang along with the radio played Johnny Cash's song 'Wanted Man,' and Cooter joined in with him. It only took five seconds after that before a youthful voice joined in with them, as a lad who didn't know half of the words to the song tried to sing along with them. Bo, he had the tune almost right, but the words he sang didn't always match. It made Cooter and Luke laugh again as they listened to him. Ten was an impressionable age, and Bo really tried to be like his two older heroes, and he couldn't understand why they were laughing at him, so he stopped singing and looked at Cooter to try and figure out what he had done wrong.

"Cooter, why are ya laughing at me?" Bo asked, poking his shoulder with his small fingers.

"We ain't laughing at ya Bo," Cooter assured him. "We just thought it was funny like, to hide out beneath an ol' tractor and sing."

"Promise that ya weren't laughing at me," Bo demanded.

"We promise Bo." Luke told him. Maybe they had a little, but they hadn't done it to be mean, and that was what counted.

The radio changed tune, and Both Cooter and Luke started singing along again.

"I remember to this day – the bright-bred Georgia Clay. How it stopped to the time, after the summer rain. We proudly made an old car go a woman's mind told me that's so.  
How I wish we were back on the road again." They grinned as they got to the chorus. "Me and you and a dog named Bo."

"Hey, that could be us." Cooter grinned.

"Yeah," Luke chuckled. "Me and you, and well, we have Bo here."

"I ain't no dog." Bo exclaimed. His head shot up and once more he struck it on the underside of the tractor, this time hard enough that it brought tears to his eyes.

"We didn't say ya were Bo, we just said that the song fitted us, cause it's me and Luke here, and then we have ya, and ya're Bo." Cooter tried explaining. Only the ten year old who thought he had just been referred to as a dog, and then had hurt his head, wasn't interested in listening to any explanation. He scrambled out from under the tractor and took off running. Cooter's cap fell to the ground as he ran off, struggling not to cry, because even this sad he tried to keep in mind how Luke always said that big boys don't cry. He ran over to where his Uncle Jesse stood hanging laundry to dry.

"What's the matter Bo?" Jesse asked concerned as he scooped up the boy. "I though ya were helping Luke and Cooter with that there tractor."

"Luke an' Cooter said I was a dog," Bo declared, his breathing hitched from the battle not to cry. "An' it hurts."

"Where does it hurt?" Jesse asked, first thing first.

"Here." Bo pointed to the top of his head, and Jesse felt the lump there forming under his hair, well, that wasn't new. Since he learnt to walk, there had yet to be a day when Bo didn't earn himself a bruise or a bump.

"Doesn't look to bad," Jesse declared. All we need to do is kiss the hurt away, right?"

Bo nodded and Jesse pressed a kiss to his hair, noting how he had been helping out for a bit, for how else could he have gotten oil in his hair. He would have to give the boy a bath later before he went to bed.

"Now, what was that about them boys calling ya a dog?" he asked, knowing that Luke and Cooter would never do such a thing.

"They said I were like one, cause there was a song on the radio." Bo tried to explain.

Jesse looked behind him where Luke and Cooter came shuffling over to them.

"What is this all about?" Jesse asked them. Even though there was no accusation in his voice, the two boys shifted uneasily.

"Well, that ol' song was playing." Luke began. "The one that goes 'me and you and a dog named Bo,' and when we joked about how we had Bo, I guess it sounded all wrong, uncle Jesse."

"We never meant for Bo to think we were saying he was a dog," Cooter added.

"It ain't always easy for a child to understand what you mean with the word 'like' boys." Jesse pointed out.

"We're sorry Bo." Luke embraced him so that he would know he really meant it.

"Really, we didn't mean for ya to think we were mean," Cooter added. "Can ya forgive us?" He knelt beside Bo, just like Luke was doing.

"If ya let me help ya, an' don't go saying it again." Bo decided.

"We promise we won't," Cooter assured him. Then to Bo's delight he put the cap back on his head, and swung him up on his shoulders to ride there back to the tractor.

Jesse smiled as he watched them go. Luke and Cooter both needed to learn that things didn't always sound the same to them as they did to Bo, that the boy read other things into it. Bo was also a bit more insecure than Luke had been, and he wanted a bit more reassurance. There was a time when Luke hadn't really cared to much for always having Bo trudging along after him. Once he had told the lad to get lost, meaning he should go home, but little Bo really got lost, walking off from the road and no one knew where he was. It had been a frantic search before he had been found, right upon the edge of a canyon wall, one step from falling over the rim. That scare had taught Luke to take his little cousin more seriously.

There hadn't been a need to punish him for it either. Luke was still berating himself for it, and Jesse would rather have it forgotten, and little Bo didn't recall much of it. He only recalled all the hugs and kisses from everyone who was relieved that he was back safe, and that it had started with Luke being angry at him. Still, both Luke and Cooter were good boys, and they would never intentionally let the boy come to any harm. He couldn't ask for much more than that, and he didn't.

Bo himself forgot all about it once he was back under the tractor with his two favorite heroes, and Cooter once again guided his small hands to do what he himself did with his bigger ones.

The End

Thank you all for reading, if you liked it, please review, Elenhin


End file.
